tseitsei

Tried to get my SingleStageToLaythe(and maybe even back if I can fit enough fuel in, but just 1-way planned at least for now) spaceplane to work again (with FAR and DRE installed). Still no luck but I understood that it must be a center of thrust issue. I can get to ~30km fine but after that it becomes increasingly hard to hold my nose down so I wouldn't flip and before 40km I have always flipped. But I think my center of thrust might be a little below my center of mass so that would explain it. I'll try to fix that tomorrow...

OK. One last question. When I switch to my rocket engines how much I should pitch up my plane for maximum efficiency? 45 degrees? As much as I can without my horizontal velocity to start decreasing? or something else?

Please read my post you quoted entirely and not just parts of it. I said that it would be bad IF heatshields were OP not that they WILL surely be OP. But yeah the problem with specifical heatshield PARTS is that we woukd need very very many different sizes and shapes of them to be able to shield different sized and shaped spaceplanes efficiently and aerodynamically. Just fixing the heat tolerances of all normal parts to a sufficient level compared to reentry heat is much better IMO. (And that slider thing even more so)

Ok. thanks Another question: How much rocket TWR I should have to efficiently reach orbit?

3 options here: 1. heatshields are not a seperate parts and all parts have a certain temperature tolerance after which they will explode. In this case re-entry heat will obviously be scaled to those temperature tolerance values so that re-entry (and reasonable aerobraking) will be possible without heatshields. And you should also choose to use parts that have high temp tolerance if you are going to land to eve. I don't really like this solution though and I hope squad comes up with something better... 2. heatshields as seperate parts In this case re-entry heat should be scaled to be much hotter than in case 1 and would easily destroy all non-heatshielded parts during re-entry (or aerobrake) so you would just have to use heatshields for every re-entry. Main problem with this is that shielding spaceplanes and different shaped crafts would be difficult because we would have only some heatshield parts in few different shapes and sizes so I don't like this idea either. 3. My favourite idea that I already described higher up: All parts have a slider that you can move up or down to increase/decrease that parts temp/tolerance up to a certain limit. BUT making your parts more temp resistant would also make them heavier and more expensive (Like the wing strength slider in FAR). That way you could essentially shield any shaped and sized ship you want, but it wioll be heavier and more expensive to build

You shouldn't re-entry from interplanetary speeds. Except for aerobrake from upper parts of the atmosphere. You should gradually lower your speed while coming too fast. Let's say you come to eve from kerbin with periapsis speed of 4km/s. You should do an aerobrake in the upper parts of the atmosphere to kill you speed as much as possible without going too low and blowing up. But you will (probably) still need engine powered retrograde burn to capture to highly elliptical orbit (because you can't dip low enough to atmosphere to lose enough speed without blowing up) with ap at the edge of eves SOI and pe in the upper atmosphere of eve. After that you can gradually aerobrake from upper atmosphere each orbit to lower your apoapsis until you are at low eve orbit and then you are ready to do your final re-entry at reasonable speed

How to estimate or calculate roughly how many engines and how much wing area I need for a spaceplane with certain weight?

You have a method. It is called shallower re-entry angle and otherwise manuevering your descent (S-turns are nice...). What's the point of adding re-entry heat if you are just going to add some OP heatshield parts that you just slap at the bottom of your ship and do the same easy mode re-entry at 90 degrees re-entry angle again. Re-entry SHOULD be hard and heat SHOULD destroy your ship if you enter with interplanetary speeds and/or wrong angle. I'm sure that if there are no heatshields as seperate parts the heat tolerances of "normal" parts will be scaled accordingly to make re-entry possible but not as brainless and idiotically easy as it currently is... Other option is to add a heatshield parts but make them weak enough for re-entry to still be challenging and not just something like "LOL Im re-entering at 6km/s but I have a heatshield so it's not a problem :D" IMO heatshields should be done like this: All parts have a slider that increases their heat tolerance (to a certain upper limit of course) but increasing heat tolerance would also increase the parts weight and price also. /Kind of how FAR deals wing strength/mass thing)

If you want the "easy" way you can just use mechjeb to get the numbers you need without understanding how to get them. If you want to really understand how things work you just have to read about spaceflight and orbital mechanics online and actually do the math yourself. If someone just provides you with already made equations putting some numbers in those equations doesn't really make you understand how stuff works. You have to understand where the equations actually come from and why do they work. Not just accept the fact that they work somehow magically. A good place to start is learning basic mechanics for circular(and elliptical) motion. Then you should probably study some orbital mechanics and get familiar with rocket equation. I myself found it fun and good exercise to actually derive rocket equation myself so now I actually know where it comes from and WHY it works. Same with oberth effect. Simple calculations with kinetic energy changes clearly show WHY that effect exists. TL: DR If you want to REALLY understand how things work you have to actually study those things yourself and not use some already made calculator.

Yeah the best you can do with that amount of fuel left is: 1. Burn retrograde with your atomic engines as long as you can keep your descent speed at reasonable level (I would say 150m/s but that's just a guess you'll need to experiment with that. 2. After that ditch the atomics and burn retrograde with the poodle engine and hope you have enough fuel Experimenting with the starting orbit height and when to ditch the atomic engines can help so try several combinations. I don't know if you still have enough dv to land and am too lazy to calculate it right now... - - - Updated - - - EDIT: on another thought maybe you shouldn't ditch atomics but just activate the poodle also and burn with everything. But again I should just do the maths to see which one is better option...

IMO what we need is: 1. Life support system that needs oxygen, food and water to keep your kerbals alive (toggleable ofcourse) 2. A way to make a self sustaining base/colony but that should NOT be easy at all. That should need proper planning and choosing a good spot and a massive infrastructure there to mine/haul/refine and transport all needed materials to the base. So a way to somehow generate oxygen, food, water and also refine some fuel on the spot.

Best method would be difficulty settings. Easy=no re-entry effects Normal=some re-entry effects but quite easily manageable still Hard=most realistic re-entry effects that actually need extensive planning to get along with

this is the best solution.

That challenge measures in game time and not IRL time... so if you get "a slideshow" in game time gets slower accordingly and lag doesn't affect that... It obviously takes longer in real life time though... but that's not a problem in this challenge

We cannot know for sure if infinities exist in nature. Besides Pi "exists" (it is the ratio between a circles diameter and circumference. Quite natural definition if you ask me...) and it is infinite. Although I have to say that I HATE the concept of infinity in mathematics as well and think it doesn't make much sense but mathematics debate isn't really the point here. This is more like physics/philosophy... From the very same article: " If the density of the universe exactly equals the critical density, then the geometry of the universe is flat like a sheet of paper, and infinite in extent." P.S. I suggest being less arrogant and rude and already decided what you want to believe. That doesn't lead to a good conversation...

I agree that ALL those permanent contracts should be automatically active ALL the time without the need to wait for them to appear and then choose them seperately. Otherwise I think the contract system is quite ok.

Maybe just MAYBE April fools jokes are supposed to be done on April fools day...

This is what WILL definitely happen

Is this really possible? Video would be awesome. This whole thing would be best thing I have ever seen done in KSP

Why would anyone think that clouds or new planets or new textures are of any priority? The game keeps crashing and using insane amounts of memory. First fix that. And then some annoying bugs. And then make VAB/SPH work properly. When I have a big ship the pieces just won't "click" themselves to right spot without a huge fight :/ . Also Sub-assemblies are not working that well. I can't build a lander for example and put it in the sub-assemblies because I have to remove the pod part from it. And when I take the sub-assembly out again it has only 1 node that I can attach it from (usually on top of it and I might want to attach it on top of something for example so I would need an attachment node on the bottom too...) Maybe after that add new landscapes/textures/clouds...

We don't have "gravity chambers" IRL either. You'll just have to fly it to orbit to test it (I recommend planning it properly in advance to not have to do this so many times) like NASA also has to if they want to do zero gravity tests... Other option is to just play KSP as a "game" as you say. For that you already have a way to essentially use "zero-G chamber" it's called F12-button. So just use it as a gravity chamber or do "real" tests on LKO... Why is debug panel so bad for you? If you want to use it's features (zero-G or anything else) just do so. If you don't want to then don't. Simple. It's a single player game and you make your own rules...

What is the best life support mod for me? I would like it to have oxygen and food needed at least (maybe water also). I would also like to be able to still build independently working stations/bases without needing maintenance flights. So a mod should provide me with methods to build bases that can produce each resource needed on the spot. Thanks

I was playing career mode and doing the mission where I have to save that one kerbal from LKO. I had just done nice burn that gave me a 300m approach to that guy. After that I saved the game ofcourse. Now every time I open the save and get close than 1km from the kerbal with my ship, the game just crashes. Every time at exactly the same point so obviously the save file is somehow not good. That is also the only save file I have from that career (I know it's still at the very beginning but I wouldn't want to start all over again) so is there any way I might be able to fix that? Well at least now I know better to make different save files before every launch to make sure I don't have to start from the scratch if this kind of thing happens again...